Straight Man (17 page)

The intercom crackles, and Rachel is on again. “Professor DuBois would like to see you.”

“Okay,” I say, directly into the intercom, loud enough so that I’m sure Gracie will hear. “Frisk her and send her in.”

Gracie enters. She’s dressed beautifully, expensively, in a beige dress that looks like it could be cashmere. As her always lush body has gotten bigger, so has her hair, as if it’s her intention to keep her general bodily proportions the same. She looks, frankly, heroic and quite wonderful, a brave woman intent on one last sexual conquest before menopause. I can understand Mike Law’s having become dispirited. If ever a man was unequal to a task presented by a woman, Mike is that man. As always, Gracie’s perfume precedes her, and I remember that it was the sensation I had of asphyxiating in Gracie’s perfume yesterday that got me started on her.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance we could conduct this meeting like adult professionals?” she says, not unreasonably, given the fact that I have slipped on the false nose and glasses I got from Mr. Purty. I’ve detached the mustache on the theory that it doesn’t contribute to the effect I’m after, which is slight exaggeration, not broad parody. The black plastic glasses to which the fake nose is attached are not unlike my own reading glasses, just as the plastic schnoz is only slightly more ridiculous that my own ruined proboscis.

However, Gracie’s reaction is disappointing. I was counting on a double take at least. If I had done to Gracie’s person what she has done to mine, I’d have had a bad moment. I’d have concluded, however briefly, that I’d injured her worse than I thought. Guilt would have made the comic nose look momentarily real in the cruel light of moral imagination. Either Gracie has no moral imagination or she knows who she’s dealing with.

“Gracie …,” I begin.

“Dr. DuBois,” she corrects me, waits. I myself don’t have a Ph.D., is her point, and she doesn’t want me taking liberties.

We both wait.

“Fine,” she continues. “Well, I only have a few minutes, but I wanted to see you before I left town.”

My wife, the dean, my mother and Charles Purty, now Gracie. That makes five.

“Actually, I’ve come to apologize, Professor Devereaux. I never intended—”

“Hank,” I correct her, with a magnanimous gesture. When I take off the fake nose, Gracie, to her credit, does wince.

“I’ve thought about the whole thing,” she says, “and I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing to do is separate the personal issues from the professional.”

Though I have no idea what this means, I tell her I think that’s an excellent idea.

“I’ve decided to file a grievance against you,” she continues.

“Is that the professional part or the personal?” I interrupt.

Gracie ignores this. “That way my position as a senior faculty member will be clear. And that I have no intention of being pushed aside.”

Here Gracie pauses so that I may digest this.

“I know you think this is small of me, but I must protect my turf. If we were hiring another fiction writer, you’d do the same.”

I consider telling Gracie that we’re arguing a moot point since the funding isn’t going to come through and no one’s turf is going to be invaded, but I have promised Jacob Rose that this will remain our secret, and, besides, most academic arguments end up moot, so there’s no particular reason to surrender this one, which has already cost me a nostril. “Gracie—” I begin.

She holds up her hand. “Maybe you’re more secure than I am. I admit you’re a successful writer. I just think it’s cruel of y’all to want to show me up. I’ve given fifteen years to this institution. I won’t be moved aside.”

If this weren’t so pitiful, it would be funny. Not just Gracie’s feelings of inadequacy, which are real enough. But as a tenured full professor in our egalitarian, unionized, colonial outpost, Gracie couldn’t be moved aside with a backhoe. I open my mouth to tell her this when it occurs to me that she’ll take the comment as a cruel reference to her having gained weight. The other thing that shuts me up is incredulity. Gracie’s concession—that I am a successful writer—illustrates how little we have in the way of expectation around here. My slender book,
published twenty years ago, and forgotten the year after, is the cause of Gracie’s insecurity. The last thousand copies of the eight thousand print run were purchased by the campus bookstore at remainder price and have been sold there for full jacket price for the last fifteen years. Last I checked, there were still a couple hundred left. Who but Gracie would be jealous of such success?

“Anyway,” she continues. “The grievance is only part of what I want to talk to you about. You may not believe me, but I’ve always liked you, Hank. You’re like a character in a good book. Almost real, you know? Not like professors. I know I’m one of them. I wasn’t always, but I am now.”

Of all the odd things Gracie has ever said to me, this is surely the oddest and the most touching. No less absurd, of course, this professed admiration for the fact that I’m almost real.

“You should know,” she says, her voice lowered now, “that Finny is sounding people out on the idea of a recall. I think he plans to introduce the motion at the next department meeting. The way things stand, I’m afraid I know the way I’d have to vote.”

Gracie’s wrong about herself, it occurs to me. She’s more real than she knows. But she’s right about what she’s become.

“Do we understand each other?” Gracie wants to know. Her smile has a suggestion of the lewd about the edges.

“Better than we understand ourselves,” I tell her, putting the false nose and glasses back on to illustrate my point. “By the way,” I say. “I expect to file a grievance against you as well.”

A flicker of fear, closely followed by surprise. The latter is probably because I am the only member of our department who’s never filed or even threatened to file a grievance against a colleague.

“And I should warn you that a charge of sexual harassment is a serious matter,” I tell her, deadpan.

“
Sexual
harassment?” Gracie knows better than to ask this question. I can tell she senses a trap, but she just can’t help herself. In English departments the most serious competition is for the role of straight man.

“You weren’t turned on yesterday?” I say, mock incredulous. “I mean,
I
was turned on.”

When she’s gone, I quickly remove my disguise and, like Clark Kent, hasten to the men’s washroom down the hall, where I stand in front of the unforgiving mirror awaiting my water. While I’m standing there, three students come in, unzip, pee, zip, and leave without washing their hands, and I’m still right where I was, contemplating the things in life that youth takes for granted. I have all the classic symptoms of age, however—sleeplessness, creaking bones, inflexibility (physical and other). I know a great many older men who admit to silent, lonely vigils, sitting like old women on their commodes at three in the morning, waiting, waiting, falling asleep finally with their heads in their hands, only to be startled awake by the sound of their own tinkle. William Henry Devereaux, Sr., I suspect, is one, and though I am still some months shy of fifty, I am apparently to be another.

Like today’s theoretical physicists, and like William of Occam, my six-centuries-dead spiritual guide, who sought to reconcile Faith with rational inquiry, I’m seeking a unifying theory. Twenty-four hours ago I stood in front of this same mirror filling rough brown paper towels with blood from my punctured nostril. Today, I’m back, dick in hand. Yesterday, my blood flowed more freely than my urine does today. What I’d like to know is whether this is funny or tragic.

I have my suspicions.

Here’s the kind of twice-a-week racquetball game Tony Coniglia and I play. Tony, who’s fifty-eight and built like a fire hydrant, stands in the center of the court and serves. It’s what he does best. His thick, compact body generates considerable power, and on the serve he can blister the ball low and hard down either side of the court. His mechanics never vary, which means his opponent can’t go into the point with any preconceived ideas. The rest of his game is similarly sneaky. He can pass, dink, and kill off the same motion, which means he can make you look silly, and there’s nothing he likes more than making you look silly.

What Tony can’t do is run. He’s had heart trouble on and off for the last five years, and his doctor allows him only mild exercise. This is where the most beguiling feature of our contests comes in. Tony has decided that it’s all right for him to play racquetball if he takes no more
than one step in any direction from center court, which means it’s my job to hit the ball back to him within this radius. Otherwise he deems the ball unplayable and takes the point. I’m allowed to kill the ball directly in front of him if I’m able, but I can’t use angles. Since racquetball is a game of angles, my handicap is so huge that he has to give
me
points, usually six to eight a game, and even then I seldom win. When he gets too far ahead, he turns and glowers at me, his bushy eyebrows knitted, and tells me to bear down.

“Bear down,” he says now with the score 14–7, his favor. “I’m awfully tough today. You’re going to have to play harder.”

Tony’s most ironic statements are always delivered deadpan. Either that or he doesn’t consider them ironic. Maybe he really thinks he’s tough today. I suspect there are times when he forgets the handicap that allows him to compete in the first place. He loves to compete and to wager. He’d bet money on our games if I would go along. I might go along except that I never know who’s won the point until he tells me. So we make other, nonracquetball wagers, though I never understand these either. Tony has a sister in Tampa, and therefore he follows the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team, and every season he comes up with some crazy scheme that will allow him to bet on them. Last year he told me to pick any team I wanted, and he’d take the Bucs. For twenty dollars. Whichever team had the best record at the end of the season. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll take the Oakland Raiders.”

“You can’t have them,” Tony explained. “It has to be a comparable team.”

“Comparable to Tampa Bay?” I said, already confused.

“Any comparable team.”

It turned out I could have any team without much talent. I could take the Jets or the Rams or the Seahawks, for instance. “I still don’t understand. What are we betting on?”

“On which is the better team, of course,” Tony explained, as if he suspected I was being intentionally dense.

“What if they don’t play each other?”

“Overall record,” he said. “Playing each other doesn’t count.”

“How can it not count if they play each other?” I objected, attempting to apply Occam’s Razor. “Wouldn’t that game settle the issue right there?”

But he wouldn’t hear of it. The more he thought about it, the more wrinkles he wanted to throw in. If the Bucs made the play-offs and my team didn’t, I’d have to pay double (and vice versa, he added reluctantly).

“And you promise to tell me if I win?” I said when he was finished explaining.

“It’s simple. Pay attention,” he said, and then he explained the wager again, this time adding another wrinkle or two. So I picked the Chargers, who lost in the first round of the play-offs. Tampa Bay finished in the cellar. He paid up, too, though he was pretty pissed off that I wouldn’t go double or nothing next season. Again I could take any team I wanted (except the Chargers were now on the list of teams I couldn’t choose) and he’d take the Bucs. I took his money and put it in my pocket.

“Bear down,” Tony advises now. “There’s not much point to this if you aren’t going to try.”

In fact he’s been running me all over the court, and I’m exhausted, frustrated, ready to concede. Also, I have to pee again.

“Game point,” Tony reminds me, then serves. I return the ball hard, and it whistles off the front wall, the perfect passing shot I’m not allowed, well out of Tony’s reach.

“Game,” he says. “Mine.”

I throw up my hands in defeat. “Thank God,” I say. I’ve grown used to losing on my best shots.

“Let’s go one more,” Tony suggests.

“No,” I tell him.

“One more,” he says.

We play one more. If anything, my play improves, which means that I lose by an even greater margin. He terms this final defeat of mine a humiliation. Myself, I’m not sure how to feel about it.

Tony always knows how to feel. In the shower he sings
Rigoletto
full bore. He never cares who’s in there with us. The operatic urge that accompanies victory is too strong to be denied, no matter who stares. Today, we’re alone, so it’s just me staring in my customary disbelief.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about women lately,” Tony says, when we’re toweling off. He enjoys the effect of omitted transition. “Of fornicating with them, actually.”

I know there’s no need to respond to Tony when he introduces subjects in this fashion, so I work on my lock, which is tricky and usually requires two or three correct applications of the combination.

“Do you realize that I’m far better at fornication now than I was at eighteen?”

I tell him I’m glad to hear it.

“It’s true,” he says, still deadpan. “I have a lot more stamina, more desire, more technique. I have a lot to offer women.”

Indeed, Tony has something of a reputation in this regard. In addition to a few faculty wives, his conquests include not a few undergraduate students, though he never dates or beds them, he assures me, until after his final grades are in. Such professional scruples notwithstanding, Tony’s indiscretions have cost him a final promotion to full professor, a penalty he accepts with great good grace.

“More than any other human activity,” he says, stepping into his Jockey shorts, adjusting himself carefully in them, “the act of fornication defines us. That’s a known fact. All the evidence suggests that I’ve got a lot of good years left.”

On the fifth try my lock finally opens.

“Fornication is more spiritual than physical,” Tony continues. “Most women know that, but not so many men. Which is why men like me are in demand. You laugh,” he adds.

It’s true. I am laughing, though not so much at Tony’s genial boasting as at the fact that he doesn’t consider it boasting. Having introduced this subject, he sees no reason why he shouldn’t explore it fully, as if his interest were purely analytical, scientific. “You’re the only man I know who claims to know what women want,” I explain.